Science Lush

The Lush List: 06/25/11: SETIcon, Science of Hangovers and Juicy Brain Photos

SETIcon II
Just what is it about CA and the 'Cons? VidCon starts on Thursday in Anaheim, Comic-Con is right around the corner in July in San Diego, and this past weekend, the SETIcon II hit Santa Clara. And just what is SETIcon? As explained on the event's website:

SETIcon brings together innovative scientists, science fiction authors, space and science artists, space lovers, and the curious and adventurous everywhere for a 3-day public celebration and exploration of space, real science, technology, imagination, and science education.There is no other event in the world like SETIcon that explores space and the human imagination through the lens of real science, attracting global interest and participation. This is not a science conference with technical lectures (SETI Institute scientists lecture all over the world). Instead we’ll bring together scientists with authors and artists to celebrate science and exchange ideas around space exploration and our place in the cosmos. SETIcon will create a new channel of discussion between Earthlings where real science and imagination will meet.

I'm all for increased discussion amongst Earthlings about that sweet spot where science & creativity meet! Unfortunately, I couldn't go myself, so what's a modern girl to do? Absorb some of the conference vicariously via Twitter, YouTube and the blogosphere.

If you search for #Seticon on Twitter, you'll find some nuggets from the conference. Here are a few that caught my eye:

Jenny Ryan @tubebananas: If I can inspire others to do science thru sci fiction & dreaming, then my work has not been so silly as it seems -Robert Picardo #SETIcon

Camilla Corona @Camilla_SDO: Doug Vakoch: Humans are very visually oriented. What if other life forms rely on other senses? #SETIcon #AlienLanguages

Jeff Foust ‏@jeff_foust: Doug Vakoch: what we read into any extraterrestrial message will say more about us than about them. #SETIcon

Marimikel Charrier @Marimikel: People see space as for rocket scientists & billionaires. We need to change that & show how space affects us all. - @maejemison #SETICon

Now, if all these tweets have got your jonesing for more detailed coverage, take a few minutes to read Rebecca Boyle's post on PopSci about the event, where she uses sentences with more than 140 characters to describe it.

...hundreds of space enthusiasts and science evangelists came together to ask questions, buy and wear awesome T-shirts, and talk with breathless, uninhibited glee about the crazy science that keeps them up at night. Luminaries like Frank Drake and Bill Nye, along with planetary scientists, “Star Trek” actors and educators, filled two days of talks. Topics included antagonistic aliens, panspermia (“planetary spit-swapping happens,” SETI scientist Dale Andersen said), robot rights and the 100-Year Starship. It’s the only convention, as one person said, where people will be glad to tell you which of Saturn’s rings is his favorite, or which extremophile is the best.

She goes on to talk about the abundance of science tattoos; the environment created by the unique mix of science professionals and enthusiasts; and folks who have changed jobs midway through life to make careers out of their curiousity about space exploration.

The Seti Institute, the organizer of the event, is supposed to eventually post videos from the sessions on its YouTube Channel. Note to self: bookmark channel for future viewing when I need a break from cute kitty videos and Epic Rap Battles of History: Einstein vs. Stephen Hawking.  

The Hangover Explained
The fact that you missed SETIcon II driving you to drink? Well, if you're going to imbibe, at least do so with the understanding of how the alcohol will affect your body. Y'all know I love creative science vids, so check out this smart-board animation piece from ASAPScience: WHAT CAUSES A HANGOVER?  

       

There's more video fun from creators Mitchell Moffit (@mitchellmoffit) and Gregory Brown (@whalewatchmeplz) on their YouTube channel, including HOW TO SEE OR HEAR THE BIG BANG. They have a fun presentation style, and ridiculously good handwriting.

In addition to the vids, there's an interesting argument in the comments on the BIG BANG piece about the show MINUTE PHYSICS and whether or not ASAPScience is a rip off of it. MINUTE PHYSICS has been on my list o'things to watch for quite awhile now, so I figured this was a particularly appropriate moment to check it out (hey, if I'm actually writing about YouTube videos, then watching them can't be considered procrastination, right?). 

There's definitely a shared visual style here. Is it a rip off? An homage? Or as commenter keepcalmcarryon1939 writes of ASAPScience:

Should we shun Neil deGrasse Tyson because Brian Greene was popular for trying to engage the public in science first? Or shun Brian Greene because Bill Nye did it before him? Or maybe we should shun Bill Nye because he liked to talk about science, even though Carl Sagan had his own television show way before Bill Nye did.

It's not about about who did what first. The important thing is that so many people are interested in talking about science. And that, friends, is really spectacular.

The science nerdling in me agrees - the more engaging ways we have to talk and learn about science, the better. However, the artist in me wonders if I might be a bit ticked off if I felt someone had copied or borrowed my unique take on how to explore science...even if the "borrower" explicitly stated that I had been an inspiration for their creation. Would I feel flattered? Or like calling my lawyer? Thoughts?

[Source: Thanks to The Daily Dot for bringing ASAPScience to my attention].

Wellcome Image Awards 2012

OK, this one's not for those with a weak stomach. The Wellcome Image Awards, from the Wellcome Trust, were presented on June 20th in London. The winner is a photo of a living human brain. Robert Ludlow took it during a surgical procedure on a patient with epilepsy. And while I'm usually somewhat squeamish about such things, I found myself gazing at the photo for longer than I would have thought my delicate sensibilities could handle, amazed at its vibrancy. I'm so used to seeing dull, lifeless brains floating around in jars (um, yes, I watch a lot of sci fi)...was incredible to see the living brain captured in all it's glory, looking so JUICY!

So just what are these fancy awards all about? Says the Trust's website:

Catherine Draycott, Head of Wellcome Images and a member of the judging panel, said: "The Wellcome Image Awards are unique in that the winners are chosen for their scientific and technical merit as much as for their aesthetic appeal. They offer people a chance to get closer to science and research and see it in a different way, as a source of beauty, as well as providing important information about ourselves and the world around us."

Credit Robert Ludlow,Wellcome Images
Intracranial recording for epilepsy. Surface of human brain in situ

You can see the entire collection of photos at WellcomeImageAwards.org, including my two other favorites: a striking shot of caffeine crystals and a very cool pic of connective tissue removed from a human knee.

 

 

The Appendectomy Special

Well, it's been a hell of a few weeks! Usually, I don't get too personal on ScienceLush, as I figure if you really want to know what I'm eating for lunch or which guilty pleasure TV show I'm currently obsessing over, you can follow me on Twitter (I Tweet about science & culture, too, but there's a lot more random stuff thrown into the mix). However, the last few weeks beg some shearing' here, as I've been on my own personal medical science adventure.

So here's the deal: last Friday, I had an emergency appendectomy. This was complicated by the fact that I'm 4 months pregnant!

I've never had surgery. Ever. Never even spent the nigh in the hospital. So surgery + pregnancy was a pretty frightening undertaking.

It all started when I had some low-level cramping on Sunday, Feb 28th. When it got really bad on Monday, as in doubled-over-in-pain-at-my-desk-bad, I called my OB/GYN. She had me come in and checked me out. The good news was that the baby was doing ok; the bad news was that my pain could be due to several things, including a rather large fibroid growing in my uterus. Fibroids are non-cancerous uterine tumors that are extremely common in women, and they tend to grow during pregnancy due to the extra estrogen in the system (mine is currently about the size of a large plum, which is making me feel a bit like Sigourney in ALIENS). At some point, a fibroid can start to die when blood supply is diverted to the fetus, and this process can be extremely painful. Given the size of my fibroid, that seemed the most likely culprit.  

Throughout the week, the pain got worse. We eliminated possible causes one by one until we had boiled it down to either my fibroid friend or my appendix. But it turns out diagnosing appendicitis in a pregnant lady is a tad difficult, in part because the organs have all moved around to accommodate the uterus. Nothing is quite where it's supposed to be. Plus, my symptoms didn't fit perfectly with either diagnosis - I was demonstrating the milder symptoms of appendicitis like fever and an elevated white blood count, but - thankfully - no throwing up. Of course, that could in part be due to the fact that overtime I ate something, it caused more pain. Part of the reason we needed to solve this riddle was because at that point, I hadn't eaten in about 3 days. After consulting with her favorite surgeon, my doc and he decided I should go in for an MRI (no X-rays for the pregnant chick) so that he could take a closer look. Soooo, Thursday night I headed off to Cedars-Sinai Hospital to be stuck inside a teeny tube while they took pretty pics of my insides.

Did I mention that I'm EXTREMELY claustrophobic? Just another level of hell to add to this experience. Got through it by squeezing my eyes shut the entire time, and having them blast Lady GaGa on the headphones (no judgment please).

We finished up at 9pm, and were getting ready to leave when the MRI tech came out and asked us if we could "just stick around for a few minutes." Um, never a great sign. The radiologist & surgical residents needed to chat about what they were seeing, which they described as a  "suspicious" looking appendix. I usually associate that word with LAW & ORDER re-runs, so we finally got someone to leak it to us that my appendix did indeed appear to be enlarged and there was some fluid where there probably wasn't supposed to be. But again, not conclusive, as an MRI offers less definition than a CT scan.

At that point, it all gets kinda blurry, partially due to the fact that I spent most of the next 15 hours curled up in a ball of pain. In what seemed like a very fast sequence of events, we went from the MRI to being admitted to the ER to me being stuck with a bunch of needles. Then consults with more docs to more ultrasounds to a very cute male ER nurse (we've nicknamed him Gay Ben Affleck) casually telling us at 2am, '"Oh yea, they're probably going to operate on you in a few hours" as he inserted an IV into me to finally getting admitted to a hospital room at 3am where they blissfully gave me some painkillers that are ostensibly safe for the baby and knocked me out for a few hours.

The final decision of everyone Friday morning was that while the evidence of a screwed up appendix wasn't definite, the risk of sticking a camera inside me and checking was much lower than not checking and having the appendix then rupture, which would be really bad for both me & the kiddo. The plan was to go in, take it out either way, and then I'd never have to worry about this particular health issue again. So, on Fri at about noon, off to my first surgery and general anesthesia (going under = fun! coming out = not so much).

According to all, the surgery went well. The appendix actually looked rather healthy when they removed it, so they sent it to pathology for a closer look. One one hand, it was almost disappointing to hear that the fibroid was the culprit - no one wants to have unnecessary surgery. On the other hand, though, I felt a hell of a lot better after the surgery. The insane pain was gone, and if it did come back, at least we'd know it wasn't dangerous - just something I'd have to get through. So the docs and I were still all in agreement that we had made the right decision. Something had clearly not been right in my system and the operation helped. And plus, now I'd have some cool scars as souvenirs! I spent another night in the hospital (Cedars Sinai tip: they have really good chocolate chip cookies - request them if you get the chance), and then a week at home recovering. 

I went for my follow up with surgeon yesterday, and guess what? It was indeed appendicitis!! Even though the organ looked pretty healthy on the outside, apparently when they cut the sucker open, there was some nasty stuff inside. I never thought I'd be relieved to be diagnosed with acute appendicitis, but the husband and I were actually thrilled to find out that that's what was behind the pain.

I know someday all this will just be an anecdote we tell our 10-year-old when she's misbehaving ("Do you know what I went through when I was pregnant with you?!?"), but right now, it's still fresh and raw. In a way, the husband and I feel like we turned into parents last Thursday night. For the first time, we had to make life or death decisions about not just the two of us, but about the kid as well. Up til now, the pregnancy hasn't felt quite real. But now I know in my gut she's coming (as if the morning sickness during the first trimester wasn't enough to tip me off!). And I'm guessing she's going to be pretty stubborn...I'm due in August, and she's already demonstrating typical Leo qualities of dominance by kickin' my appendix out of her space! 

It was also an experience to see a very human side of my doctors. They were pretty damn jazzed when the pathology report came back. As my OB/GYN said, "Even though we had all agreed that the surgery was the course of action with the least risk, no surgeon likes to cut into someone unnecessarily." They were just as relieved as we were to find out that the surgery had indeed been needed, and that in fact, we were quite lucky to catch the appendicitis as early as we did. A good lesson in trusting my body, and in finding docs who don't let up until they have explored every possible avenue. I've always enjoyed writing about bio-ethics and advancements in medical science - seeing it in action has given me a new perspective on it all.

The Lush List: 2/26/10

1. The annual TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) took place from February 9-13, 2010, in Long Beach, CA, and videos of talks from the event are slowly rolling out online. Overwhelmed by all the video goodies? GOOD has put together a collection of their 10 favorites so far. Lots of science & medical folk features in their picks, including biochemist and cell biologist Mark Roth, vaccine researcher Seth Berkeley and spider silk scientist Cheryl Hayashi.  

2. Y'all know my fondness for well-crafted commercials. In honor of the just-finished Olympics, here's a trippy gem from AT&T of Gretchen Bleiler snowboarding into space set to Lou Reed's "Perfect Day."

3. And speaking of random collisions of space and pop culture, Dancing with the Stars will take on a whole new meaning when this season debuts on March 22nd. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin will be joining the cast, which also includes the likes of Shannen Doherty, Kate Gosselin and skater Evan Lysacek.

4. I've been keeping an eye on the new interactive series Future States, a project from ITVS (Independent Television Service). Eleven fictional digital shorts explore possible future scenarios through the lens of today’s global realities. ITVS asked a group of filmmakers to take the current state of affairs in the United States, and extrapolate them into stories of the nation in the not-so-distant future. The result is an exploration of social issues, with elements of speculative and science fiction. Along with the shorts, there are also a variety of interactive elements featured on the Future States site, including the usual sharing tools plus a nifty Predict-O-Meter. This allows users to enter their own future predictions, as well as see what others think is in store.

'Transcendent Man' at AFI FEST: A Profile of Futurist Ray Kurzweil

I spent last week frolicking at AFI FEST, the annual film festival produced by the American Film Institute. Normally, I see a ton of movies, but this year I was tasked with covering AFI's DigiFest, a two-day event that showcases the work occurring at the Digital Content Lab, along with a curated presentation of cutting-edge sites, mobile applications and creative experiments in the digital space. For more on that, keep an eye out for my upcoming article on www.documentary.org.

Fortunately, I was able to make some time for movies, including Barry Ptolemy's TRANSCENDENT MAN, a documentary about inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. Made with Kurzweil's cooperation, the film examines the theories of the acclaimed author of THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR (2005), as well as his personal history. In addition to lots of featured screen time for Kurzweil, director Ptolemy has included interviews with a number of scientists, writers and futurists. He's included thoughts from both detractors and supporters of Kurzweil's ideas, including inventor Dean Kamen; Robert Metcalfe, Co-Inventor of the Ethernet; and Kevin Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading.

The film opens with a primer on Kurzweil's background and accomplishments. At the age of 17, he appeared on the show I'VE GOT A SECRET, playing music written by a computer he built. Among other devices, he was the chief inventor of the flat bed scanner, a reading machine for the blind and the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano. He holds numerous patents, as well as 16 honorary Doctorates, and received the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton in 1999.

TRANSCENDENT MAN explores Kurzweil's belief that there will be a "singularity," a future period when the pace of technological change is so rapid that humanity will not be able to handle it unless we borrow from the technology we are creating. Kurzweil's basis for this idea comes from mathematical models he constructed of the rates at which technology has evolved over the years, and the observation that information technology is advancing in an exponential – as opposed to linear – fashion. He predicts that the singularity will take place in 2045.

NEWSWEEK did a piece on the film in May 2009 after it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and does a lovely job of explaining exponential growth.

Kurzweil makes predictions based on a notion that he calls "the law of accelerating returns," which holds that technology does not advance in a linear fashion but rather at an exponential rate. It's the difference between 1-2-3-4-5 and 1-2-4-8-16. Go out 10 steps and the linear string has reached 10, while the exponential string is hitting 512. With an exponential progression, at first, when the numbers are small, the progress doesn't look like much. But each new breakthrough enables the next breakthrough to occur more quickly, so the rate of change accelerates. Represented on a graph, the line of progress looks like a hockey stick—it's flat for some years, and then there's a sudden rise, which gets misinterpreted as a sudden breakthrough when really it's just the continuation of an exponential progression, Kurzweil says.

In the film, Kurzweil states that the most important phenomenon in the universe is intelligence, and that developments in three key areas will bring about the singularity. Advances in genetics and biotech will allow us to reprogram our biology away from disease and aging. Developments in nanotechnology will lead to microscopic machines, smaller than blood cells, which will enhance our health from within our own bodies. Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) will allow us to go beyond the limits of human intelligence and do li'l things like back up our brains.

Kurzweil makes no secret of the fact that he doesn't accept death, and that he believes that technology is the road to a form of immortality. This is where the film goes beyond being just another talking heads science program. Ptolemy delves into Kurzweil's family history, suggesting that his father's early death is partially responsible for the scientist's fascination with eternal life. Kurzweil was just 22 when his father passed away in 1970. He fully expects to be able to bring his dad – or a very close facsimile – back to "life" one day using a variety of technological advances, DNA information and artifacts from his father's life. Kurzweil may be a genius, but he's also a pack rat, and has boxes and boxes of letters, music, and artifacts from his father's life packed away until they can be applied to Dad 2.0.

So is Kurzweil a crackpot, brilliant...or both? He's got his fair share of supporters, such as Peter Diamandis, chairman and founder of the X Prize Foundation. Diamandis has signed on as Kurzweil's partner in Singularity University, a nine-week summer program which describes itself as an "interdisciplinary university whose mission is to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies in order to address humanity’s grand challenges."

Others, however, take issue with Kurzweil on a number of different fronts. In the film, Dr. Hugo de Garis, a professor at Xiamen University under contract to build China's first artificial brain, says that neuroscience is still determining what intelligence actually is. He doesn't think Kurzweil takes into account the potential negative impact of these developments (something the fans of the The Terminator would probably agree with). This doom-and-gloom attitude doesn't faze Kurzweil; he responds to this criticism that the challenge of the 21st century will be to keep AI's "friendly," reflecting human values.

Supporter Diamandis expresses the idea that people who resist the process of being "upgraded" are actually resisting evolution, and won't survive. For me, this brings up the more philosophical question: at what point do we evolve into something completely different than that which we currently define as human? And is that "different thing" necessarily a bad thing?

After the film, there was a Q&A with Kurzweil and AFI programmer Lane Kneedler. An audience member asked Kurzweil his thoughts about immortality, posing the question: what is the point of creation once there is no death to frame meaning? The futurist answered that all limitations will not be thrown away, as there will always be a boundary of ignorance that we will aspire to conquer. He said, "I think death is a tragedy because it's a great loss. It robs us of what gives life meaning: having relationships...and creating."

Another audience member questioned Kurzweil about the where creativity fits in to his vision of the future, citing the example that an iPhone can download Shakespeare, but can't appreciate it. Intelligence and interpretation are not the same thing.

Kurzweil responded confidently, stating that while emotional intelligence is at the cutting edge of human intelligence, ultimately it's still a process that takes place in the brain. This means that when we complete the reverse engineering of the brain – which Kurzweil believes will happen within the next 20 years – we'll understand how emotional intelligence works just as we will every other activity that takes place in the brain. And once we comprehend those basic principles, we'll then be able to create systems that amplify them. Thus, the fusion of man and machine won't make us less human...we'll just understand much more about the processes that we currently define as human.

The Lush List: 9/27/09

THE LUSH LIST
An irregularly posted list of SciCultureTech that makes me go ooh! 

1. It's all about the ring(s)
Nothing says "I love you" like the perfect diamond, and Saturn's rings are the gem of the solar system, inspiring deep devotion around the globe. The Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn for the last five years, has a prime view of the rings right now due to their particular tilt. The resulting shadows have brought the rings' features into stark relief, allowing for some pretty amazing pics.

Here's just one of the many incredible shots from JPL's Cassini Equinox Mission page:

The unique geometry of equinox has thrown into relief small moonlets within the rings and the structures they create around them. Propeller-like features, a few kilometers long, centered on and created by the action of small embedded moonlets only about 100 meters across, were discovered early in the mission (see PIA07792 and PIA07790). These previous findings constituted the first recognition of the presence in Saturn's rings of bodies bigger than the largest ring particles (about 10 meters, or 30 feet, across) but smaller than the 8-kilometer-wide (5-mile-wide) ring moon, Daphnis, in the outer A ring.

For more on the mission, read The New York Times' profile of Dr. Carolyn Porco, a senior researcher at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, CO and the leader of the camera team on the $3.4 billion Cassini mission.

2. An AIDS Vaccine? Maybe Not.
Earlier this week the news was all abuzz with stories of a potential AIDS vaccine based on the results of a 16,000 person U.S./Thai trial. But a closer look reveals that perhaps there's not much there to celebrate. The Lay Scientist offers a dissection of the results.

3. Swimming on the Moon
Widespread but small amounts of water have been discovered on the surface of the moon. MSNBC.com reports:

While the findings, detailed in the Sept. 25 issue of the journal Science, don't mean there are pools of liquid water sitting on the moon, it does mean that there is — entirely unexpectedly — water potentially tied up or mixed in the minerals that make up the lunar dirt.

The new observations from India's Chandrayaan-1 satellite, NASA's Cassini spacecraft and NASA's Deep Impact probe challenge the previous assumptions about the make-up of the lunar surface. Suddenly, a trip back to the Moon begins to look a lot more interesting...don't forget your snorkel.


4. Rock Stars of Science
The band Aerosmith doesn't usually conjure images of research labs, but the "Rock Stars of Science" (Rock S.O.S.) campaign is attempting to change that. Created by GEOFFREY BEENE GIVES BACK®, Rock S.O.S is a public education campaign to create awareness and support greater funding for medical research across diseases. It pairs celebrities with leading scientists to highlight the “rock star” genius that drives scientific innovation.

On September 24th, Rock S.O.S. presented an event on Capitol Hill featuring Aerosmith's Joe Perry and some of the nation’s top scientific minds, including Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Rudy Tanzi, Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University. The event was moderated by Terry Moran of ABC News and included panel discussions and interviews with a focus on promoting cures and improving therapies for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, HIV/AIDS and PTSD.